


The Right To Fight

by Tht0neGal666



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/F, Gore, I guess???, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Abuse, Karin centric, No Karin Bashing On My Watch, One Shot, and there is a skimmed over bear mauling, but I love KarTen too much to just..leave it out., karin backstory, karin has a hard life, morally grey karin, no actual violence but karin thinks about it alot, romance is only very breif and at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 09:06:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19353853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tht0neGal666/pseuds/Tht0neGal666
Summary: Humans were selfish creatures, and no one wanted to consider the toll it took on the Uzushio refugee woman herself. No one even noticed she was dead until she had been dead for hours, last sliver of chakra drained by the last sick villagers.The village was free of the plague, and they celebrated.Karin was free of whatever freedom her mother had scraped together for her, and she seethed. She wanted to fight, because it was the opposite of healing.





	The Right To Fight

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I love Karin Yes I also love Sakura, we exist  
> Anyway, Karin deserved to kick more ass.

"I want to fight." She whispers. She is six years young and completely alone, her mother dead in the bed above her little cot on the floor. Her face is streaked with blood and tears, and all she wants to do is tear into the village and kill everyone who had ever used her mother for their own benefit. Everyone who would now use her.

Her mother was kind and understanding and warm, and now she was dead. She would have done anything for her daughter, and in the end she did. Not a single person bit Karin until she was six years old and dozens- maybe hundreds- of people were lined up to get themselves magically healed with one bite.

Humans were selfish creatures, and no one wanted to consider the toll it took on the Uzushio refugee woman herself. No one even noticed she was dead until she had been dead for hours, last sliver of chakra drained by the last sick villagers. 

The village was free of the plague, and they celebrated. 

Karin was free of whatever freedom her mother had scraped together for her, and she seethed. She wanted to fight, because it was the opposite of healing. 

\--  
"I want to fight." She demands. Her voice is shaky and her eyes are shrouded by the glare of her glasses, but her fists are clenched and her shoulders are squared. She is eight years grown, taller then any other girls her age and twice as awkward and gangly, and she is laughed out of the Kusakage's office. She refuses to cry as she turns mechanically and leaves.

She is eight, and there are already bites on her thighs and up her torso and around her neck. She is eight, and she has bruises and scratches from the desperate grips from those on deaths front step. She is eight, and she can't stand the touch of another person. She is determined.

She refuses to cry every other time she asks; once a month, like clockwork, for years. If nothing else, she was persistent. A voice that sounded like what she could remember of her mother echoed that it was an Uzumaki thing, and she redoubled her efforts.

\--  
"I want to fight." She states for about the 30th time, extremely hopeful that it didn't come off more as a whine. She is ten years of age, and she finally has a breakthrough. The Kusakage's twin sons had graduated, but would have had to wait until someone else graduated to become proper gennin because there wasn't a third graduate for the team. 

Instead, the Kusakage had smirked down at her as she demanded to fight again, and her gaze did not fall, even if it did quiver. He nodded slowly.

"I suppose something can be arranged, as long as you keep your hard work at the hospital up." he concedes, and for once she doesn't shiver at the thought of the cold white walls and antiseptic and teeth.

Finally, there was hope, even if it was distant and vague. If she was a ninja, she could at least try to run away or fight her way out of the village.

She did the best to match his grin and measured her breaths carefully to hide her excitement as she accepted a headband.

\--  
"I want to fight." She almost begs, stood behind her new Sensei. The man didn't even look at her; he never did. Not until one of her idiot teammates got the slightest cut, and he pushed her over to heal them. 

She wanted to fight. She wanted to bite their fingers off. She wanted to taste their blood and see if it was as delectable as everyone made hers out to be. She wanted to tie strings to their limbs and puppet them around; see how these brats liked being used and abused. She didn't want to baby them and heal their every cut before they even felt the pain. In fact, it was just about the last thing she wanted to do.

Really, the only thing below it was leaving the team. It was hell, really, but her life had been hell for years. she is twelve years determined, because she couldn't afford to be anything else.

\--  
"I want to fight." She insists, though she doesn't dare to refuse to heal her teammates. The boys look at her funny, like they weren't aware she was smart enough to talk. She does not stab Kunai through their hands to pin them down like their father had done to her once or twice, but she does wistfully consider it. She is fourteen years angry, and she has a morbid certainty that this chapter of her life will close soon. One way or another.

In the end, they don't even respond to her. They ignore her completely, but they stop slowing down enough for her to keep up with them. She trips and falls down out of a tree as she hears screams, and looks up to see the bodies of her teammates being loomed over by a bear quintuple her size. It doesn't take her more then a second to realize they're dead, and she starts giggling. She'll take it, really. 

Then she stops, as she comes to a chilling conclusion. Her teammates are dead. Which means she doesn't have a team. Which means she won't be allowed to be a Shinobi anymore.

She runs away from her village and into the waiting arms of Orochimaru. He experiments on her sometimes, which she hates, but she rarely has to heal people because they have Kabuto for that, so it's manageable.

She never declares that she wants to fight, while she's in Otogakure. She still does, but she knows her place. As long as her place isn't primarily one of a healer, She'll take it.

\--  
"I want to fight." She growls, because she can afford to do that these days. Even though it never stopped being true and constant and there, the words are hard to fit her mouth around. She is eighteen years cold because she could never afford the warmth her mother had, and that is her condition for joining Sasuke's rag tag group. Not her only one, not even the one she'll insist on the most, but the most important one.

If she lets herself get dragged along with a group of boys that she didn't even like that much across entire countries, she will be poisoning Suigetsu at the very least if she isn't allowed to fight. 

Sasuke gives her a weird look that screams 'yeah, duh', but he nods. She almost cries, she almost screams, she almost snarls 'fucking finally', but she knows better than to do any of that.

Instead she gives an ecstatic and feral smile, and makes the mistake of falling madly in love with Sasuke.

\--  
"I want to fight." She claims, because the words are easy and familiar. It isn't true really, not anymore. She's twenty years old, older then she should be and so so so tired, and she doesn't want to fight anymore. She's been fighting for her entire life, whether she realized it or not. For so long, she was fighting for the right to fight. By now, she was too tired to feel the bloodlust that used to crawl under her skin and demand she raze Kusa to the ground.

The girl across from her quirks a single pretty and perfect eyebrow and says "Do you?" in the tone of those who smell bullshit, and she gives a bitter huff of defeat.

"I want to learn how to fight." She amends. "I've...never really learned before. I'd like to learn. Who do I talk to about that?" She grits out as politely as she can, which isn't very. In all honesty, she can barely remember how to be polite, and absolutely refuses to try.

"Me!" The brunette chirps with a smile so sharp that Karin's only thought when she sees it is how easy it would be for the girl to tear skin with her pearly white teeth. She shivers at the thought and swallows down the memories as she nods. 

"Works for me." She shrugs, and the girl bounces on her feet with excitement. The woman, TipTip or something, pulls out a Kunai and holds it, and doesn't even comment on the fact that Karin can't even hold a Kunai properly.

On second thought, maybe she will take the time to destroy Kusa. Later. After she finally, finally, learns how to fight.

\--  
"I want to fight." She challenges, not for the first and certainly not for the last time. Karin is twenty two years strong, as she spins a Kunai confidently on her finger and tilts her head to stare over her glasses at her girlfriend. 

She gets a toothless but still dangerous smile in response. With no warning, a dozen Shuriken fly at her, which she deflects without moving a step. Because TenTen is insane they are followed by a mace, which she ducks under. She focuses on her chakra and forms familiar chains, wrapping them around Tenten's ankles.

She feels giddy and safe and dangerous, and she pricks her thumb with a Senbon (still can't bring herself to bite it) and scrawls an Uzumaki seal in blood that Naruto had recently taught her. If nothing else, her seal-obsessed girlfriend will readily take the bait. She sits in a tree, releases her chains, and waits.

All in all, life's pretty good, and maybe all the fighting was worth it to get here. Her girlfriend insists that she can and will assassinate Orochimaru if Karin ever asks. She has a cousin that will do anything for her. 

Karin Uzumaki tastes Tenten's lips and Ichiraku Ramen and sealing ink and the air of a village hidden in a forest. It tastes like freedom.


End file.
